In the field of compressor technology, it is generally known to use piston type compressors with motorized vehicles in order to supply conditioning to the vehicle's interior. One example of this is a conventional socking swash plate type compressor. This type of compressor incorporates a plurality of pistons that reciprocate in a plurality of cylinder bores formed in a cylinder block as the rotary shaft rotates. As the pistons reciprocate, refrigerant gas, is supplied from a suction chamber to the cylinder bores where the gas is compressed. The compressed refrigerant gas then forcibly opens a discharge valve provided in a valve plate associated with each cylinder bore, and is discharged into a discharge chamber through a discharge hole. The compressed refrigerant gas is then supplied to an external refrigeration circuit through an outlet port which communicates with the discharge chamber.
In conventional compressors, however, after the refrigerant gas gets discharged through the discharge hole, and as it travels toward the outlet port in the discharge chamber, the gas encounters a second discharge valve different from the one corresponding to the aforementioned discharge hole. This second discharge valve, when struck by the refrigerant gas, tends to vibrate and generate noise. Unfortunately, since each discharge hole in the conventional compressor has its own discharge valve, increasing the number of discharge holes results in increased compressor generated noise.
One proposed solution to this problem, as described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 51-40609, utilizes partitions provided inside the compressor's discharge chamber to eliminate discharge valve vibration. The partitions described in this publication define a plurality of subsidiary discharge chambers which cooperate with the discharge holes in the cylinder bores. These discharge chambers communicate with each other via a communication passage formed by a plurality of holes in the cylinder block and the valve plate. The refrigerant gas in this compressor, once discharged through each discharge hole, is supplied to a first associated subsidiary discharge chamber and then travels to the adjoining subsidiary discharge chamber via the communication passage. This design allows the pulsations of compressed refrigerant gas to be suppressed in contrast to compressors having no such partitions. Despite its design however, even this compressor can fail to eliminate all the vibration and pulsations that occur during the discharge of compressed refrigerant gas. Consequently even this compressor suffers from the aforementioned noise problem.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a piston type compressor that eliminates conventional compressor noise generation by reducing discharge valve vibration during that time when compressed refrigerant gas flows through the compressor's discharge chamber.